


spring, summer, snow

by nerdlordholocron



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: 2.30 spoilers, Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Sort Of, floral symbolism; floral bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-25 18:33:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15646524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdlordholocron/pseuds/nerdlordholocron
Summary: Yasha finally returns to plant flowers; she finds a whole garden waiting for her.





	spring, summer, snow

**Author's Note:**

> @dathen, I don't know if you intended this to be a prompt, but whoops, I went off.
> 
> "Yasha comes back with her snapdragons to see that there’s already a swarm of them sprouting out of the snow"
> 
> I've been demanding flowers for a solid 24 hours so I might as well write em.

She doesn’t know how long it’s been; she hasn’t counted the days. Months, it must be, since some of the snow has begun to melt, turning the road to slush, staining her clothes a permanent grey-brown. Yasha keeps going, one step at a time.

She can hardly remember the voice of her guide, from back when… no, she’s steeled herself for what lies ahead, but there’s no shield in the world thick enough for what lies that far behind. The Stormlord’s voice echoes in that place in her mind now, sometimes, and for a while there, the quiet was filled with beautiful bullshit. But her god has been quiet for some time, and she needs to fill that silence, finally, with something other than her own shouting. It’s time to go back.

And the Mighty Nein stay south, she’s heard, so it’s down the Glory Run Road again, through scenery she never saw, through scenery she hates. It’ll be soon, she knows, she can feel it in her bones and the pit of her stomach, in her shoulders where her wings belong. There are some flowers in her book, and a pouch of seeds in her pack, if the ground isn’t frozen too much to plant. She doesn’t know how to correctly plant things, really. The flower seller gave her instructions but didn’t seem to expect her to follow them, shaking his head as she left the shop.

Soon, now.

She rounds the bend, through the twinned hills, closes her eyes a moment. The coat’s probably gone, and for all Yasha knows that he would have wanted it to warm some freezing stranger, she doesn’t want this, doesn’t want to see the empty wooden marker.

But she has to. She opens her eyes–

She opens her eyes to chaos, is what it is. A huge mass of flowers have broken through the snow, covering the grave, surrounding the pole. The snapdragons she’d thought of are already growing, amid– well, she doesn’t know all the names, but she’s fairly sure none of these have any business growing this far north, much less in the dead of winter. There’s a bunch of huge bright pink ones that she’s fairly sure are tropical; stalks of purple blooms, little blue ones, and she knows the name on those ones, they’re forget-me-nots. There are bunches of lavender, some other herbs crowded in between the flowers, and, what, some of those other flowers look downright– well, she knows he’d find them hilarious. So would Jester. Maybe Yasha will have to tell her about them. There are little white flowers that look almost at home in the snow, and everywhere she looks, she spots something different. 

It’s ridiculous. It’s impossible. It’s perfect.

The coat is still there, too, a little soggy, a little weathered, and it flaps in the wind almost jauntily. Yasha knows an invitation when she sees it. She steps carefully through the flowers and sits down with her back to the pole. The wind is cold, but not nearly enough to bother her, and at ground level, it looks like spring– well, no, it doesn’t, it looks like spring and summer in any number of regions, all mashed together. It looks right.

“I’m back,” she says to the air. “I’m sorry. I love you. And… you loved them. And I’m going back.” She pauses. “Soon,” she amends. 

And soon, she will go back. But for now, for the moment, she sits with the flowers– ridiculous, impossible, perfect flowers, he’d have loved to see something like this.

In the silence, she can almost hear his laugh.

**Author's Note:**

> I started looking at plant symbolism like a week ago for the Molly portrait I was working on and I just kind of kept rolling with it (and bullshitting flagrantly, when it came down to it, as is probably apropos). Partial listing of what's growing here:  
> Hibiscus: Actually I just went with this one cause it's huge and pink and foofy and he'd love it, and the tea it makes is pretty good.  
> Delphinium: Joy, fun, big-heartedness. That's his flower, as far as I'm concerned, even if I can't draw it right. (And also it's purple.)  
> Forget-me-not: What it says on the tin.  
> Butterfly-pea flowers are weirdly lewd-looking (I think both our tieflings would laugh their asses off, and probably also our monk), but they're also kinda pretty, and more to the point the tea you make with them changes color from blue to purple when you add lemon and if that's not the most extra goddamn thing, and as such entirely perfect... well.  
> Snowdrops: consolation, rememberance.  
> Lavender largely cause it's his sort of thing; purple and smells nice.
> 
> Find me on tumblr at nerdlordholocron.


End file.
